SW Daily

Turkmenistan has the world’s third most suppressed media, followed only by North Korea and Eritrea. However, the coverage of a deadly explosion marked the unprecedented emergence of citizen journalism in one of the world’s most isolated countries.

For the first time this summer, City of Asylum created an exchange with Passa Porta, a literary organization in Brussels. It brought Paul Mennes, a Belgian writer, to Pittsburgh and sent Terrance Hayes, a National Book Award winning poet, to Brussels

Internet rights advocates in Italy celebrate the postponement of a gag law that would allow the Berlusconi government to actively censor the media and penalize journalists and publishers with fines and prison sentence.

For his book Abhaya, James Mackay photographed former prisoners with the name of a current political prisoner written on their palm. More than 2,000 Burmese political prisoners — including monks, students, journalists, lawyers, MPs and over 300 members of Aung San Suu Kyi’s opposition National League for Democracy — are incarcerated in horrendous conditions.

“Today, let bones be smashed like the dreams of our youth” says Shihab, the protagonist of Magdy El Shafee’s graphic novel Metro. An English translation of the banned Egyptian graphic novel will be available in 2012.

The South African periodical Chimurenga released a new issue designed to be a “time machine”, backdated to the week of May 18-24, 2008 during which several waves of xenophobic violence and protests spread across the country.

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About Sampsonia Way

Sampsonia Way is an online magazine sponsored by City of Asylum/Pittsburgh that seeks to protect and advocate for writers who may be endangered, to educate the public about threats to writers and literary expression, and to create a community in which endangered writers thrive and literary culture is a valued part of life.